How much fun!

IT Journal

June 8, 2012

We woke up early on this Friday, because Hannah from the University had found out that our immigration documents were actually at the Police Station Immigration office in Bra and we could pick them up there this Friday. Arriving 30 minutes before the station opened, we found a crowd of people already in line to go in. As the doors finally opened, everyone went up to the Immigration or Passport offices, and a woman from the Immigration office started taking documents from the people who came in when the doors opened. We gave her our documents, and waited…and waited…and waited. Finally, a man came out and said in Italian an announcement that I didn’t fully understand. I asked in my broken Italian if it was correct that if we have given them our documents we could stay, and if not, we needed to come back another day. I threw in some English words where I needed to. The man did not understand me, but a young lady stepped forward and said in perfect English, “He said that the computers are down, and if you haven’t given them your documents, you should leave. They won’t be able to do anything for anybody until the computers come back up.” Che bella! I thanked her for translating for us. What a big help! I get along fine when it doesn’t matter if I miss a word here or there, but this time I really needed to understand the announcement. We talked with the young lady Joanne and her husband Kim for a while. They were very interesting and had brought their family to Italy for a year. They were having a great time, but they had tried 6 different times to get their documents, and they were not leaving without them that day.

At least 30 minutes later, the woman came back out to say that the computers were working, and she called the first 2 people on her list. They both went into the office and came back out no more that 2 minutes later. We were hoping beyond hope that our problems were over. Sure enough, only about 15 minutes later, we were called. The man that helped us had our Sojourno card,  and he was very friendly and joked with us about how only Naples officials have the ability to fix problems on their computers, which makes a serious problem all over Italy. Then, when he put Peter’s in the computer, the computer went out again. Che bella! He immediately went to get the number to call in Naples, but when he started dialing, he checked his computer. All of a sudden, he started singing, “Alleluiah! Alleluiah!” The computer was working again! He finished the process with Peter, me and another person in line within 2 minutes, and we were on our way. Thank goodness!

Peter had missed 1 ½ hours of his 3 hour class, so we went to get some coffee, then found Heidi and Brenda shopping at the street market. Peter got some vegetables and fruits and took them home on the bicycle. I stayed with the girls and ended up with a hat like Cati’s for me, a pair of capris for Heidi, and a very cute sweater for Brenda. It was a great shopping spree!

We told Peter we would be home for lunch at 1230 with pizza, so we went to the bakery across from Chiavassa AGAIN, and got some yummy  pizza slices to add to the veggies, cherries and leftover pasta that Peter had for us…another wonderful meal.

After a good rest, we went with Peter to a Saglietti Flavio vineyard in La Morra, and met Cinzia and her family, and Daniel, Anna and Maya Brazil for tasting . Flavio did a wonderful job of walking us through the road of early wines, older wines, and finally wines that are ready to sell. He explained each step and how his philosophy is to be true to the best wine possible with his wines. It was very informative and lots of fun, and the view from his balcony was outstanding. We couldn’t see for the fog, but he told us the Alps could be seen from that balcony on a clear day. I’d love to go back on a clear day! Afterwards, there was talk of lots of police checking cars out on the roads, so we stayed in La Morra for pizza and finally drove home the back way. That was probably very smart, since we all were pretty silly for a little while.

The drive home was peaceful and quick, and all of us fell into bed ready for sleep. What a nice day.